Facebook Accused of Faking Ad Clicks Through Bots

Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) is coming under fire from one of its customers today. A Facebook page by a young startup company, called Limited Pressing, claims that Facebook has been charging them for visitors that are not real.

The young entrepreneurs began testing Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB)’s advertising service, in hopes of driving up revenue for their company. However, they found could only verify about 20% of the clicks their ads were receiving.

The first solution they tried, in order to locate the problem, was to change which company they used for analytics. They hoped this would fix the problem, and continued monitoring. However, after trying several new analytic programs, the company claims that they still received the same dismal results. They were only able to verify 20% of the people clicking on their ads.

After using multiple analytics software on the page, and getting similar results with all of them, the young startup designed their own analytic software to test their theory. Their software revealed that 80% of the clicks came from computers which had JavaScript disabled. The standard for most people is to have this program running, with only 1% or so of Internet users disabling it.

All of these signs point to bots clicking on their ads, and driving their advertising cost up. When Limited Pressing tried to contact Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) about the problem, they received no reply.

This was just another straw on the camel’s back, between Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and Limited Pressing. Their page further claims that they have changed their name to Limited Run, and wished to rename their page because of this choice. Facebook allegedly replied back, saying they would be more than welcome to change their name, provided they would spend $2000 per month on Facebook advertisements.

The owners of the young company have notified followers that they will no longer be on Facebook. They said “Thanks to everyone who has supported this page and liked our posts. We really appreciate it. If you’d like to follow us on Twitter, where we don’t get shaken down”, following this statement, they left fans a link to their Twitter page.

Limited Run did respond to our questions with an email, stating that they feel that it was a list of bad experiences with customer service, which led them to delete their page. While the page is still viewable on the web, the company plans to delete it in the near future. The email also said, they are not accusing Facebook of owning the bots which clicked their ads, and that there is no indication of who owns them.

When we contacted Facebook about these allegations, they told us: ““We’re currently investigating their claims. For their issue with the Page name change, there seems to be some sort of miscommunication. We do not charge Pages to have their names changed. Our team is reaching out about this now.” Sadly, now may be too late to save their customer, or their public image.

In other news, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB)’s stock has dropped 5% today, another dark sign for the social networking giant.